Hey guys ChrisFix here and today I'm going to
show you how to dig up your entire driveway and redo it to make it look amazing! Now I
thought this would be an interesting video, it's not what I normally do, but the driveway is
a pretty important place for me because this is where I do all my work, this is where I make all
the videos to teach you guys how to fix your car, and this is basically like my office and
it's seen better days look at this... This is all just crumbling apart and it's
just not good... It's not safe to work on anymore and it's difficult to work on.
Even something as simple as the transition between inside the garage and the
driveway, is sunken down and in disrepair along the whole length of the garage.
When I move the toolbox in and out of the garage, multiple times a day, you can see it
get stuck at that sunken part where the driveway meets the garage.
And this toolbox is very heavy so getting it over this ledge is difficult, so
fixing this is going to be a big deal for me! Another major problem with the driveway
is when I go to use jack stands. You can see how the unleveled driveway
causes the jack stand to wobble which is definitely not safe at all.
Like guys said this driveway has seen better days it just constantly
keeps lifting up and it's not good, it needs to get redone, there's no
doubt in my mind, and it's hard because like I said this is my office this is where
I work and this is where I make my videos. So how do I redo a driveway and
not work on it for a couple days? Well I figured let me show you the entire process.
Now unfortunately a driveway this bad cannot be easily repaired with common hand tools like we're
used to we're gonna have to bring out the heavy machinery but don't worry I'm going to show you
the entire process from start to finish including: Ripping up the old driveway...
Putting down new gravel... Grading and leveling it...
Bringing a compactor in... And then putting down the new asphalt
driveway so we could get amazing results. So let's take one last look at this
old tired driveway. She's treated us well with 10 years of repair videos
that garnered over 1.5 billion views, where you guys learned how
to properly repair your cars! So let's fix this driveway up!
Okay so first we need to dig up the old driveway and get down
to the dirt and rock underneath and to do that we're using a
skid steer with a tooth bucket. The team starts at the beginning of the driveway
over by the sidewalk and the goal is to pry up the asphalt without damaging the sidewall.
You also don't want to dig into the ground too deep which could loosen up that
dirt and rock underneath the driveway. We want that dirt and rock to be as hard as
possible, this is known as the sub-base and it's nice and hard and compacted after 30
years of this driveway being on top of it, so we don't want to mess that up...
Now once the skid steer gets below that layer of asphalt, the rest of the driveway
peels up pretty easily. I mean just watch this... Check out how the asphalt just comes
right up and goes right into the bucket. And now once that bucket is filled, the skid
steer dumps the old pieces of driveway into the dump truck and the process repeats.
Now if you look closely you can see my driveway is actually two layers of asphalt
because when they first built the house, the contractor took a shortcut and put down
only one inch of asphalt to try to save money. A driveway should at least be two
inches thick, but since it was so thin, the driveway started to crack, and the
owner of the house at the time complained. And instead of digging up the driveway and
repairing it properly, all they did was put down another layer of asphalt right on top
of it which ultimately caused this to fail. Now once they get to the garage they
have to be careful not to damage the garage doors and the concrete slab.
You can see the spotter helping the worker in the skid steer break up that
last piece of asphalt next to the garage, and now that that's broken up, the team could
get in there and manually pick up the last few pieces of asphalt and throw it into the bucket.
That way there's no risk at damaging the garage. And that includes this last
giant piece of asphalt! Now with the driveway completely cleared
out, the last of the asphalt is dumped into the dump truck and now there's about
25 tons (22,000kg) of asphalt in this truck and this will be taken to the asphalt plant
where they cut it up into little one-inch pieces called millings and then that'll
be recycled and used in new driveways. Okay so with the old driveway dug up, the next thing to do is make sure
the new driveway will be straight. So the workers use a rope that they pull
tight from one end of the driveway to the other. Then they walk down the
rope and mark the edge with paint . Once one side's done the process is repeated
on the other side of the driveway as well. Now with these lines put down, a tool called a
mattock is used to cut a straight edge along the entire driveway. (dirt digging noises)
And on the other side of the driveway, another method of getting that straight
line is to use just a basic shovel and work your way down the line to create a nice
and straight edge. (more dirt digging noises) Okay so the edges are straight and all the old
asphalt is removed so we're down to this bare dirt, and the old driveway really compacted
this dirt so it's very hard and that's good. This is a great sub base for the new driveway to
go over, but the problem is, it's not level... So the solution is to use quarry processed stone,
also known as QP stone, to level this sub base. Now if you never had a driveway and
you're putting a brand new one in... You're gonna want 4-6in (10cm-15cm)
of this quarry process stone put down. But since we have a nice dense sub-base,
they're only adding an inch or two of stone, to grade and level the surface, that way
the new driveway won't have any sinkholes, and it'll slope slightly towards the
street to allow the rain to run off. So the skid steer driver is putting down
about one to two inches of QP stone as evenly as possible over the entire driveway.
And once the stone covers the whole driveway, you can see he's using the bucket to
level out any high or low spots, like so. Finally the team uses rakes to
manually level out the driveway, focusing mostly on the edge of the driveway. Now these guys are doing great work
and getting the driveway pretty level, and normally this is where most people would stop, but the owner of the company said he has a trick
up his sleeve to get this driveway extra level... And that trick is to get the asphalt
paver, back it all the way up the driveway, and do a dry run to let the
asphalt machine level the driveway. You can see the screed which is that flat piece
of metal at the back of the paver, leveling out the extra gravel on the surface. And using the
paver for this actually makes a lot of sense because this is what's going to be laying down
and leveling out the asphalt in the next step... And not only are they making it extra level but
the weight of the paver compresses the stone, and you can really see how well this
trick works to flatten out that stone. Now while they were leveling the
driveway, I noticed the concrete path going to my front door got damaged
by accident, right at the corner here. Luckily I caught it and this is
a pretty easy fix at this stage. First they need to lay down a straight line... And to do that they're using a rope with some
chalk on it to imprint the line onto the concrete. Next they use a gas powered concrete saw
with a diamond blade to follow that line, and cut the concrete.
And as you could see, anytime you cut concrete it creates a lot of dust. So the trick to keep the dust down is
to spray the area with water as you cut. Now once they're done cutting with the saw, the concrete pieces could be removed
and then they're just going to fill this area in with stone and compact it and
level it with the rest of the driveway. I'm just glad I saw this now and
said something because if I waited this would have been a lot more difficult to fix. So now the guys are finishing off leveling
the rest of the driveway with the paver, and once that's done we're ready
to move on to the next step... But first the team took a quick lunch
break and apparently one of the guys was a fan of the channel and he was
showing his friends the videos I make. I thought that was pretty cool! (ChrisFix noises) Okay the last step before adding the asphalt is to compact the sub-base even more,
so we won't have any sinkholes. Now the reason why they're
spraying down the driveway with water is because dry stone and
dirt doesn't compact very well... Think about building a sand castle
with dry sand... it just falls apart. But if you use wet sand, it holds together,
so the same principle applies here. With the driveway wet, now they could
take a tandem roller which weighs 4,000 pounds (1800kg) as much as a large car,
and all this weight is pushing on the ground through these two rollers which really
compresses the stone and dirt together. (Tinny vibration noise) And if you listen not only is it rolling
over the stone with all the weight, but it also has a vibration feature, and
those vibrations shake the particles of dust and dirt and stone together, so they fit
closer, and you could compact it even more. So the vibrations make a huge
difference on getting this compact. So the tandem roller is worked up
and down the driveway multiple times, overlapping its path to make sure
the entire sub base is rock solid. And once they're done with this, we are ready
for the final step: laying down the asphalt! Now something I noticed that I was pretty
impressed by was after each step these guys clean their machines immediately, which is how they
look so good even though they're used every day. Alright and for the last main step, the asphalt
paver is brought onto the driveway to warm up. While it's warming up the workers mark
the center of the driveway because the driveway is wide enough where there
has to be two passes with the paver, which you're going to see in a second...
Once the driveway is marked the dump truck is back from the asphalt plant
with 25 tons of I-5 hot asphalt mix, so he backs her up to the paver
that way he could dump it in. With the conveyor on, some of the
hot mix asphalt is dumped into the paver and if you can't tell this is
very very hot around 300°F (150°C). So with a full load, the paver is backed up
as close as it could get to the garage door, and they dump a bunch of hot asphalt
for the workers to manually spread. Since the machine can't get
all the way into the garage, they spread it by hand, and they check
the asphalt to make sure that there's no low spots and that it's graded
with a slight slope away from the house so rainwater runs down the
driveway and not into the garage. Now with the correct grade and thickness,
the paper backs up on onto the fresh asphalt. Then the extensions are moved outwards
to line up with the edge of the driveway. And finally the screed is lowered which pushes
down the fresh asphalt to compress and level it. Now the asphalt starts pouring out, and you
can see the extensions keeping the asphalt off the grass giving it a nice straight
edge as the paver moves down the driveway. And while you can see the asphalt comes out
as a bunch of small pieces in the front, if we go over to the back, the asphalt gets
leveled and slightly compressed by the screed, and that creates a nice smooth
level driveway. I mean just take a look at how good this driveway looks
coming out of the back of that paver! Finally at the end of the driveway,
the last bit of hot mix is poured out, and the paver is moved out of the
way so the workers could get in there and level and grade where
the driveway meets the sidewalk. And over here it's important that the
driveway is level with the sidewalk so the rain water could run off into the street
and not puddle on the end of the driveway. With half the driveway laid down,
now it's time to do the other half. So the dump truck dumps the final
load of asphalt into the paver, and the paver makes quick work at laying
the other side of the driveway down. You can see the extension overlap
slightly on the part that was just paved, and if you watch sometimes the
worker spins one of the bars, and what that does is adjust the
thickness of the asphalt going down. They want to make sure the asphalt is the same thickness on both the right
and left side of the driveway. All right, so with the entire driveway
paved, now the tandem rollers used one last time to compress the hot asphalt to
make it as smooth and dense as possible. And just watch it have a tandem roller compresses
and Smooths out this rough asphalt at the surface it's just so satisfying seeing that rough
surface get turned into a nice smooth driveway. And finally with one last pass the driveway is
completely smooth now as the roller continues to go up and down the driveway to compress it
even more it can't get to every single spot like right here next to the garage so a smaller plate
compactor is used to get into these areas that the roller can't then once the roller is done for
the final step the plate compactor makes its way around the driveway touching every square inch to
smooth out the finish and if you're wondering the reason why they use water is to prevent the hot
asphalt from sticking to the Machinery but it's also used to help smooth out the Finish because
water turns to steam when it hits that hot asphalt and that steam helps iron out the imperfections
in the driveway and it makes it look a lot more uniform and smooth so with one last pass with the
plate compactor and our driveway is officially done now this took a little over four hours
to complete and I think the results speak for themselves these guys did an amazing job all right
now that the guys are heading out let me show you the breakdown of how much this cost foreign so
for digging up that old driveway and Hauling that asphalt away putting down the QP Stone base
and then grading and leveling and compacting that stone base and finally adding three and a half
inches of commercial grade I5 hot asphalt and then rolling that all of this cost me six thousand
dollars and so you have an idea that came out to $5.45 a square foot so now you could do the math
to get a rough estimate to give you an idea of how much it would cost to get your driveway redone
all right and check out the driveway this looks so good man I should have done this a long time ago
it's just hard because I always have to have cars on here I always have to make videos and I have
to keep working to keep going with YouTube so but I got a nice little spot here that I was able to
do it and man it came out awesome holy smokes you could actually feel the heat radiating off this
thing well I know this is going to be really cool check this out so this is my thermal camera and
the purple color is about 140°F (60°C) and the yellow is about 180°F (82°C). you can see the side
closer to us is cooler because that's what they laid down first first compared to the other side
which is still pretty hot now it's important that you don't walk on this until it cools down which
takes about a day or two and they told me to keep the cars off of this for at least a week that
way the asphalt has time to cure and Harden so there you go out with the old and in with the new
and I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger and got this done because look at the difference here's
a before and after we used to have giant potholes like this and now it's nice and smooth the edge
of the driveway was crumbling into pieces and now it's straight and solid so I know they said
I had to wait a week before driving on it but I wanted to keep the cars off as long as I could
so here we are two weeks later and I'm able to Park part of my fleet on this beautiful driveway
and not only does this driveway look absolutely amazing but it's completely functional it's nice
and flat there's no more bumps and over here where I had that issue where the old driveway sunk
down and created that giant lip look nice and flat now so I could get my toolbox in and out of the
garage without having to lift it up nice and easy also if you remember with the old driveway the
jack stand was wobbly and moved around which was very dangerous well now check it out it doesn't
wobble at all no matter which direction you put it it is nice and sturdy now these jack stands
have very sharp edges here and if you put the weight of the vehicle on here it will dig into
this driveway this driveway does take about six to 12 months to fully Harden and cure it's fine
for cars but not good for jack stands so an easy solution is just use a piece of wood underneath
the jack stands and now it won't imprint onto the driveway because we have a nice large surface
area that we distributed the load over and one last thing I want to show you guys is how I'm
going to prevent the driveway from getting all messed up due to oil stains and that's pretty
simple with these oil mats they work really well the top of the mat here is an absorbent material
and the bottom of the mat is a plastic material so it won't absorb through and then get on the
driveway so I'll link it in the description if you have any interest but I just wanted to show
you guys because this is obviously a problem that I thought about I just put this brand new
beautiful driveway I don't want to mess it up and get stains on it so that's how I'm going to
prevent any oil stains so that's the process on how to replace your driveway it came out awesome
and now I can get back to making my videos and stay tuned because we have a bunch of awesome ones
coming out soon hopefully this video helps anybody looking to get a new driveway now you know what
to expect and if you have any questions feel free to comment below as always remember to give the
video a thumbs up and if you aren't a subscriber consider hitting that subscribe button for
more Automotive how-to videos! Thank you.
